The Companion Guide to Gascony and the Dordogne


Book Description

The guide for the traveller as opposed to the tourist: the person for whom the history of the region and its reflection in landscape, buildings and culture are the essence of travel.




The Companion Guide to Ireland


Book Description

As well as being a practical guide it's an exhilarating read... It is a delightful thing: anybody contemplaing crossing to Ireland for pleasure shouldn't think of going without consulting it. OBSERVER




The Companion Guide to Venice


Book Description

`It offers all that the visitor with a concern for beauty and for leisurely sight-seeing will require.' Financial Times`If ever a guidebook were designed to be read as literature it is Mr Honour's. Even those who know Venice welland love it well will add to their appreciation from this seemingly endless store of information.' Economist Offers all that the visitor with a concern for beauty and for leisurely sight-seeing will require. FINANCIAL TIMES The best guide book I have ever encountered... and a book I found it impossible not to read from beginning to end. OBSERVER There are few pleasanter ways of passing a summer's evening than sitting over a cup of coffee, and perhaps a glass of Aurum, in the Piazza San Marco. It is especially agreeable on those nights when the Venetian city band thunders away at some throbbingly romantic piece... And all the while the younger inhabitants parade around the square, chattering, flirting, quarrelling and staring at their visitors with that same unwinking gaze that Venetians have turned on their guests for the past five centuries. The facade of San Marco closes the scene in a glitter of golden mosaic and a bubbling of cupolas, while the great thick red campanile stretches up into the warm mothy darkness of the summer sky. Hugh Honour, it is clear, knows Venice exceptionally well and catches the rhythms of the city's life with unerring skill. His guide, with its winning blend of evocativedetail and precise information, spurs the reader to investigate Venice's wonders: Piazza San Marco is only the beginning of a journey into the heart of Venice and its history.




The Companion Guide to Wales


Book Description

Wales is a country where small in beautiful, a cultural tradition rooted in the austerity and erudition of the Celtic saints, a tradition more confirmed than repudiated by the Reformation and is best appreciated by lovers of small things. The delights of Wales are understated and cumulative: small country churches rather than great city cathedrals, a labyrinth of byeays away form the few highways, details of vernacular achitecture rather than grand edifices - Edward I's thirteenth-century castles being the exception that proves the rule.




The Companion Guide to Berlin


Book Description

Berlin's traumatic past and vibrant present explored and explained in a guide to the culture, buildings and society of the city. Most people do not think of Berlin as a beautiful city, but it is filled with stunning sights, sounds and textures, all the more astonishing when the stories behind them are revealed. Today's Berlin is new and vibrant, but historyhas left its scars. A look in the right place is rewarded with glimpses of the glories of old Prussia as well as the abominations of Hitler's Third Reich and of the outer bulwark of the Soviet empire. Brian Ladd, a historian whohas been returning to Berlin for twenty-five years, pays homage to the familiar landmarks, but he also penetrates into obscure corners of the city and brings them alive with his shrewd and informed comment. He explains what the sights of Berlin have meant to Berliners who coped under kings and dictators, and who toiled, suffered and celebrated as their city was destroyed and rebuilt. This book invites you to share their passions as it draws you into the dynamic new capital that has risen from wreckage of post-war German history. BRIAN LADD is at the State University of New York at Albany. He has been a constant visitor to Berlin over a quarter of a century.




The Companion Guide to Burgundy


Book Description

For anyone planning a visit to Burgundy this Guide is indispensable. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT As elegant as it is exhaustive. The whole book has body and bouquet, [its author] is well-read, witty, relaxed and impeccably observant. GUARDIAN Burgundy is one of the richest areas in France - rich in its art and architecture, its history, its food and wines, and its glorious countryside. Nowhere in Europe are there greater examples of the Romanesque: the basilica of the Madeleine at Vézelay, the sculptures of Gislebertus of Autun, the cathedral of St Philibert at Tournus. The very names of its vineyards - Corton, Chambertin, Montrachet - conjure up the robust and mature bouquet of the province. Once the abbeys at Cluny, Pontigny and Fontenay were the wellspring of medieval Christianity in Europe; now the spiritual community at Taizé speaks to the whole world. Nowhere in France is the sense of the past more immediate, nowhere does it so palpably inform the present. On its first publication, the Companion Guide to Burgundy established itself as the indispensable guide to the region. In this extensively revised new edition, FRANCIS PAGAN has updated and expanded the text to provide the reader with the most knowledgeable, reliable and attentive guide now available to this most fascinating and hospitable region of France.




The Companion Guide to Paris


Book Description

`An exuberant performance' THE TIMES Highly praised on its first appearance, this new edition of the Companion Guide to Paris, fully revised by Anthony Glyn's widow, preserves his vivid evocation of Paris - its foundation and history, ancient churches, wide boulevards and narrow streets, architecture, and philosophy - while bringing the book up to date. Special attention is paid to the completed Grand Louvre with its Pyramid, the d'Orsay and Picasso Museums and the refurbished Centre Pompidou; the changes to the Eiffel Tower and the Panthéon; and the restoration of the footpaths along the Seine. Informed and amusing, the book captures the changing moods of this fascinating city.




The Companion Guide to London


Book Description

One of the classic Companion Guides, this is devoted to the city of London. Each volume in the series aims to provide a travel companion in the person of the author, who knows intimately the places and people of which he or she writes.




The Companion Guide to Mainland Greece


Book Description

When Brian de Jongh's two classic Companion Guides, Southern Greece and Mainland Greece, were first published they were greeted with acclaim and immediately established themselves as essential guides. They have now been combined into this single volume, covering the whole of the Greek mainland. This new edition has been thoroughly revised by John Gandon (Brian de Jongh's nephew) and Geoffrey Graham-Bell, taking into account both new archaeological discoveries and recent development. Brian de Jongh combined an expert knowledge of history, archaeology and mythology with a profound understanding of the Greek people and a feeling for the landscape which inspired their myths and monuments: he describes a country that he loved and much of which Pausanias, writing almost two thousand years ago, would still recognise. This book is, more than ever, the most indispensable of all modern guides to Greece.




The Companion Guide to St Petersburg


Book Description

As a guide to the hidden city, reconstructed, imagined and remembered, as well as to St Petersburg today, this book is highly recommended. It will take you to parts of the city and corners of buildings that other guides do not reach and reveal stories that others do not tell.